Protectorate
by Mookie2
Summary: New warriors arrive, crass and undicsiplined, claiming that only they can stop something dire that is about to happen. Haruka and Michiru, driven by visions and nightmares, return to Tokyo after a self-imposed exile. And the stars are almost right...


Notes on the Continuity:  
  
In Sailor Moon continuity, this takes place after the Super S season, however the Stars season never happened. In its place, the Senshi have merely fought the usual procession of evil, with no grand revelations or apocalyptic showdowns.  
  
Sailor Moon is copyright to Takeuchi Naoko. The works of H. P. Lovecraft are copyright to Arkham House. Inspiration and chapter naming conventions are stolen wholesale from Stephen King.  
  
This fic contains strong language.  
  
***  
  
Queen Serenity was a very pretty woman. She had pretty blue eyes and pretty platinum hair that turned a pretty shade of grey when it got wet. She wore a pretty white dress with pretty gold trim, made even more pretty by the spreading blotch of brilliant crimson erupting from her pretty, perfect chest.  
  
The Queen had a gift for a commanding presence. Even now, in the destroyed throne room, with its tapestries shredded and its immaculate white tile black with blood, the Queen remained regal and dignified as she clutched at her breast, hoping to slow the blood loss, trying for the time needed to do what she had to do. She was the queen of her people to the last. Death, however, cares little for allegiances.  
  
The Senshi were murdered, her own daughter crucified and borne as the Half-Breed's standard. The corpses of the Zodiac were still warm as the serpent warriors set upon them in a carnivorous frenzy. Her armies were laid to waste, as the traitorous Generals led the writhing death to her Palace. All that was left of the great Lunar Empire was herself and Velious, Captain of the Guard, Guardian Aires. Velious tried to console her. It is not easy to console someone with the stump of a freshly severed hand.  
  
The serpent warriors were in the banquet hall... Serenity could hear them. They dared not come in; the task of executing the Queen was Beryl's, and Beryl's alone. Serenity fancied she could hear Beryl's footsteps over the incessant writhing and hissing. The massive hinges creaked, as if the door itself was resisting Beryl's presence.  
  
With a great CRACK the doors finally swung open, silhouetting the twisted form of that half-serpent hellspawn, Queen Beryl. Blinding light poured from the open door, shrouding Beryl's features and casting a long, black shadow over the entire throne room. In strode the dark Queen, like a dagger into the very heart of the Silver Millennium.   
  
She had won.   
  
Velious leapt into her path, knife in his one remaining hand. "HALT! If you dare to challenge the Queen, you'll do so over my battered cor--" Beryl cut him in half with her khopesh effortlessly, not looking at him, not breaking her stride. Her eyes remained locked on Serenity as she came to the throne and kneeled, mocking her.  
  
"My great Queen! How good of you to grant me this audience! I'm sorry I had to let myself in, but your palace guards were... indisposed!" The half-serpent monstrosity cackled, as if she had just uttered the world's most humorous anecdote. Serenity shuddered involuntarily. She grew paler by the minute. "Oh, this is almost too priceless to be true! It's almost enough to keep me from killing you... almost. I suppose the fun will have to wait."  
  
Serenity stared at the dark form before her. The woman who had laid waste to her empire. The woman who had gleefully slaughtered her only daughter. The woman who waged war on all that was good and sane. The woman who brought chaos and corruption to all she touched. She was laughing.  
  
She. Was. LAUGHING!  
  
And for a moment, Serenity howled. And for a moment, she leapt upon Beryl like a wild thing. And for a moment, they struggled. And for a moment, the Queen struck with a savage fury one would think her incapable of. And for a moment, Serenity lost all that separated her from the beasts. And for a moment, she was not human. And for a moment, blood sprayed with startling force.  
  
But the moment passed, as all moments do.  
  
She stood. Thick black blood, blood that was not her own, ran down her arm like a mighty stream. Beryl laid dead before her, nearly decapitated, face frozen in a grim mask of hate. Serenity picked up the corpse, spat upon it, and walked out of the throne room.  
  
The warriors stopped their obscene reveling as Serenity walked through the ornate double doors into the banquet hall. They were utterly silent as she held forth the corpse of their god-queen. They retreated with every step she took. They watched on as she strode into the lunar night.  
  
The palace grounds were ruined. The ornate marble and pearl towers crumbled. The plazas were shattered. Rifts cracked the surface of Serenity's beloved Moon. Not uttering a word, she strode to the nearest of the rifts and dropped the corpse in. Though Serenity's time remaining on this mortal coil could be measured in minutes, she dared not look away or even move until she saw the bloodied form pass beyond her sight into the yawning abyss.  
  
She shuddered. Memories of gentler times flitted past her eyes, an overlay to the scene of ruin and death before her. She relaxed, ever so slightly, entranced by her desperate hallucinations. Her coronation. The construction of the Palace. The peaceful merging of her Kingdom with that of Mars's. The birth of--  
  
Her daughter.  
  
Snapped from the shock-induced hallucinations, she cursed herself for not realizing sooner that she could not give up, not now. Her child, so young and innocent, must be given a second chance. It couldn't end like this. Half her life, the child had lived with the spectre of Beryl's evil over her. One could argue she never knew true happiness. Such a life was not befitting a Princess of the Silver Millennium. But how could she rectify this grave, grave injustice? And then it occurred to her--  
  
The Imperium Crystal. She hadn't dared use it, for fear of the dark powers it would attract-- but now, with nothing to lose, she had no other option. Her fingers crackled with otherworldly energy as she summoned the Scepter into being-- she expected the pain of summoning the object in her weakened state to be unbearable, but her massive blood loss had apparently dulled her to all pain. Thanking whatever higher power may exist, then damning it for forcing her into her position, she held the Crystal-bearing rod aloft and incanted the words of power she had hoped would never pass her lips.  
  
The spell worked, and she fancied she could see the bodies of her daughter and the Senshi floating on ethereal bubbles from the ground to the damnable Earth above her-- but she knew that these were hallucinations borne of massive trauma and system shock.  
  
The Palace doors spilled open, revealing a sight that gave her pause. Satiated, and having overcome their fear, the writhing mass of serpentine warriors flowed from the wrecked building like a living river of corruption, brandishing sharpened, bloodstained scimitars, and in their mouths--  
  
Chunks of gore and shards of steel. They had devoured the Palace Guard.  
  
And it dawned upon her, that while her beloved daughter had spent half her life in fear of Beryl's wrath, the Guard, long-dismissed as purely ceremonial, had spent their entire lives quaking in fear of the half-bred monstrosity. And despite it all, they had stood fast in the banquet hall, gripping their inadequate weapons with trembling hands, defending the Queen because they had no other choice.  
  
She pitied them. They didn't deserve what she had foisted upon them, no one did. By simply adding twelve names to the end of her incantation, she could ensure that they had a chance at a life devoid of conflict and terror, a life they deserved for their loyal service.  
  
As soon as she finished, she realized that the damned serpent-warriors were upon her. "Stay back!" she yelled with hoarse voice, waving the Scepter with her grey, trembling hands. "I'll show no mercy!"  
  
They advanced further.  
  
"Do you think I fear you? I'll destroy you all, damned hellbeasts!" She held the Scepter straight out in front of her, ready to wipe them out at a moment's notice.  
  
But her oxygen-deprived fingers slipped their hold.  
  
And the Crystal shattered.  
  
***  
  
I. OBSERVATION. "THAT SMILE". INTRODUCTIONS AND DEMANDS. THE LOOSE END. THE PLAN. EXPECTED COMPANY.  
  
There are not many places left in this world that are as conductive to secrets as the gleaming steel-and-concrete city of Tokyo. Beneath its neon-lined exterior of drab tradition and crass commercialism, of salarymen and idol singers, of tea ceremonies and Pocket Monsters, there lies a vast network of "under-Tokyos", shrouded from each other and the city at large. Most of these under-Tokyos are harmless, merely societies of men who dislike the overculture, and wish to forge their own amongst themselves.   
  
Yet there are some societies within the city of Tokyo that are wholly dangerous and anathema to the body of humanity. These groups, hidden in the ancient and dripping back-alleys that existed long before the city was called Edo, plot sinister machinations in service to dark nameless gods utterly abhorrent to the human consciousness. Few know of these black cults, for cults they are, and fewer still try to act on their knowledge. It would be impolite, after all, to expose their blasphemous rituals and human sacrifice.  
  
And for reasons not wholly seperate from this, something was definitely wrong with the city of Tokyo that morning, April fourteenth, 1996. None could deny that the unseasonably cold temperature had something to do with it, but that was certainly not the only reason.  
  
No, there was a definite sadness in the air at 5:25 AM. One could literally feel it saturating the thin mist that draped itself over the concrete and metal spires of civilization, like a shroud of mourning. One could easily mistake the salty sea air for tears, and walking anywhere would yeild a sensation of cobwebs breaking across one's face. It was here, under these conditions, that the guardians of human civilization would assemble.  
  
The weeks prior to this day had held their share of occurrences, but nothing especially of note. Life had gone on, as it always had. Unearthly forces, believing to serve a greater evil power, had attempted to lay waste to the city, as they always had. A group of singular women had repulsed their efforts to undermine the works mankind had wrought, as they always had. The populace, at large, was blissfully unaware of the war being waged, as it always had been.  
  
What set this day apart from those that had preceded it, and would indeed change the course of the normal events for the city, was the group of twelve Americans standing atop an otherwise ordinary four-story building overlooking the Aubuza district of Tokyo. Some leaned on the guardrail to watch the scene unfolding below them, some, confident of their abilities and not seeing a need to familiarize themselves with the enemy, lounged about the area and spoke of trivial matters.  
  
The sight that they were observing was no more than two blocks away, at the intersection of two otherwise ordinary thoroughfares. Upon the street, five young girls, who could not be more than 17 years old, were locked in mortal combat with a malformed creature with thousands of ropy strands of thick black hair. The creature was attempting, with limited success, to ensnare the girls in its hair. This was made somewhat difficult by the girls' propensity to use elemental magics on the creature.  
  
Those that did watch the struggle, watched in rapt attention. Their eyes were fixated on the spectacle. They made no sound, and the only motion that could be witnessed was that of the thin stream of cigarette smoke coming from the gloved hand of one Jean-Paul Delacroix.   
  
After a time, it ended, as all struggles inevitably must. The girls, slightly worse for wear but bearing no serious injuries, dusted themselves off, checked on the welfare of their compatriots, and summarily dashed off to the next area of crisis. It was time to confer on the spectacle.  
  
"Well, there you have it. Not much to look at, but you know what they say--"  
  
"--Never take anyone seriously who buys their combat fatigues from gay-pride festivals?"  
  
Delacroix, quite perturbed at the interruption, cast a withering glare at Janice Polito. "They say, 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do.'"  
  
"Fuck the Romans. That was the most fucked-up, pathetic thing I've seen in my life."  
  
Delacroix took a lengthy drag from his cigarette, but said nothing.  
  
"I'm serious, Del. And I've seen some pathetic shit in my life. I've seen a team of blind people try and play arena football. And I can honestly say, without exaggerating, that this is a million times worse."  
  
Delacroix gave an unimpressed sigh as he ran his fingers through his platinum-white hair. "You aren't earning points with me, Polito. Drop it."  
  
She snorted, not one to give up so easily. Standing, arms akimbo, she began a tirade. "Points? Oh, forgive me, Mr. Big Scorekeeper, give me more 'points', I EVER so wanted the 2000-point plush bear! I swear to Christ, you tell me one--" She was cut off by the sensation of a massive, muscular hand on her shoulder, and the deep baritone voice of Adrian Freeman continued from where he had stopped her.  
  
"If he tells you one more time to shut up, you'll quit this team, and go somewhere where you can get a little more respect while we die without you. We know, we know, it's only the fourth time in as many weeks you've said it. Now..." he leaned in close to her face and smiled, "shut the fuck up before I shut you the fuck up."  
  
"Good, I'm glad we have that settled. Now, it's time to get this operation started. August, drop that Game Boy, it's time we met the family."  
  
***  
  
Kaioh Michiru had an appointment. She briskly walked through the misty streets of downtown Tokyo to her destination, hoping she wasn't too late. She had only a half an hour to pick up her child from preschool before they were to go to see a movie and pick up some Mexican, and Michiru simply hated to be   
  
late.  
  
Michiru had changed, changed much since adopting her first child. She was far more orderly, far more involved with the world, less with herself. She couldn't remember the last time she played her violin, or the last time she and Haruka had sex, she was so busy.  
  
Not that she would complain, no, far from it. Little Setsuna was the best thing to ever happen to Michiru, and if that meant giving up sex, then so be it. Michiru was willing to give up anything for her little angel, anything.  
  
She finally arrived at her intended destination, Standing Stones Child Care. Checking her watch - ahead by five minutes! - she pushed open the door and walked in.  
  
The mist that hung over Tokyo was heavier in here. More oppressive, too. The large woman behind the counter gestured to the sign-out sheet on the desk, then toward the play area in the back where the children were. Michiru dutifully signed her name and child's name, the same way she had every day for four years, and walked to the back room.  
  
The day's activities had obviously included "Arts and Crafts," because there were eleven children running about the area in suits of "Armor" made of abandoned VCR boxes and aluminum foil. They ran back and forth, fighting, trying to gain an upper hand over what small, pointless territory they had. A boy with bright red hair and a girl with a green ponytail stood out the most, shouting as they "shot" each other with their fingers.  
  
"I hit you! I hit you!"  
  
"Did not!"  
  
"Blow me, you dirty cockholster!"  
  
They were totally out of control, to be certain. Little children using such language was just about the worst thing she could think of, and she just had to stop it. That group of kids in the tinfoil armor were little more than thugs, even though they were only five years old, and Michiru would have withdrawn Setsuna from the care center if it wasn't the only one anywhere near her apartment. She had to settle for silencing their profanity for now.  
  
She found the white-haired boy--Delacroix, his name was--that the gang seemed to look up to. He was sitting by an old radio, guarding it and taking his "job" very seriously. Michiru kneeled down to his level and asked him, "Aren't you supposed to be the boss of those kids?" She gestured toward the two fighting ones in particular.  
  
"Yeah, I am."  
  
"Could you tell them to behave, please?"  
  
"They are. I told 'em not to touch the radio, so they don't touch the radio." He gestured toward the radio with his shoulder. She picked it up, and placed it to her ear.  
  
The quality of sound was awful, but she could still make out the lyrics of the song being played. It sounded like the singer was far away and deep, deep under water, but she could still understand,  
  
o/` I watched with glee  
  
o/` While your kings and queens  
  
o/` Fought for ten decades  
  
o/` For the gods they made.  
  
For some reason, Michiru was very disturbed by this, and cranked the dial until she heard Bob Dylan's rendition of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" before placing it back down on the low plastic table where it belonged. She then asked him, "Could you tell them to stop swearing?'  
  
"Come on, Sessy's mom, I'm *a* god, not *the* God."  
  
"Could you at least try?"  
  
Delacroix sighed, picked his small plastic dart gun off the table, and shot two orange rubber darts, one at each of the quarreling children. Once struck, they instantly collapsed, twitching inside the crushed boxes they wore on their chests.   
  
Michiru would have scolded the boy outright, had her attention not been diverted. A small, blue-haired, grey-eyed boy was tugging on her dress to get her attention, his cardboard armor clunking as it collided with his arms. She made a note to herself to scold Delacroix for his inappropriate behavior later, then smiled at the tugging child. "What do you want?"  
  
"Mrs. Sessy's Mom? Could you do me a big favor?"  
  
"Oh? What is that?" Michiru really didn't want to help him, but she felt it was rude to deny a child.  
  
"Could you give this..." He began to whisper, "Could you give this to Ami? She's sitting right over there." He then placed a crumpled piece of red paper into her palm. She unfurled it to see what it said.  
  
"I THINK I MIGHT LIEK YOU.  
  
MAYBE.  
  
--AUGUST"  
  
Michiru almost scoffed at such half-hearted platitudes, but decided against it. If August and Ami had to find out the hard way that their love was nothing, so be it. Michiru would not interfere. The other children, however, were not so kind, and Michiru was dimly aware of them heckling August, the noise as indistinct and meaningless as a mosquito's buzz in her ear.  
  
Michiru sighed and walked over to where Ami and Makoto were sitting.  
  
Ami and Makoto were about the same age as the... thug children, but other than that they were like night and day. Ami and Makoto, along with their friends Rei, Minako, and Usagi, were nice, well-behaved children. Still not capable of really doing anything for themselves, but they did have potential.  
  
The two children each had a stenographer's notebook, and seemed to be writing things of great importance. Makoto turned to face Michiru, and called to her, "Hiya, Missy Hiru!"  
  
"Hi, Mako! Whatcha doin?"  
  
Ami looked up from her notepad and said, "We're writing down everything we know, so we won't forget any of it."  
  
Michiru cocked an eyebrow. "Really? Why don't you let me see?"  
  
"Sure." Ami then handed her the notebook, which only had four words written on it, in meticulous hiragana.  
  
CARCOSA STANDS ASTRIDE HALI, AND HASTUR UPON ITS THRONE. I HAVE SEEN THE YELLOW SIGN.  
  
Michiru gave the book back. "Is that all you know? You're pretty smart, I'm sure you know more than that."  
  
"Oh, I know lotsa stuff. But it all means the same thing. Like how emotions are nothing but chemical stimulation, so that drugs can change our souls. I know that the gods we worship care nothing for us, and that our perception of the gods was made because we are too weak to see the world on our own terms. I know that the universe is so fundamentally lawless that any rule of physics could be repealed at any moment. But it all means the same thing."   
  
She said it with no bitterness or sorrow, in fact she said it as if she was relating the baseball scores. This, as much as the content of what she said, chilled Michiru. She quickly turned to Makoto, to see what she had written.  
  
I LIKE MY OLD SEMPAI.  
  
Michiru was immediately reminded of why she had come to Ami. She placed the "love" note into her hand. "Here. August told me to give it to you."  
  
Ami's face suddenly turned very bitter, and she ripped the note in half without even looking at it. "Why don't you go pick up your kid?"  
  
Oh no, Ami was right! Michiru had wasted a whole four minutes! She dashed off to the far corner where Setsuna sat.  
  
Her daughter didn't seem to mind the delay, in fact her daughter did not at first register her presence. Setsuna was engrossed in an origami frog, meticulously working every crease and corner. It was perfect, utterly flawless, just like Setsuna. Michiru watched the girl work for a few seconds before saying, "Okay, honey, it's time to go."  
  
Setsuna did not look up. She continued to work on her frog, but she did ask, "Do you like it?"  
  
"Yes, yes I do. Now, honey, it's time to go."  
  
"You know, when you think about it, paper is really nothing," she continued. "Just a vast expanse of emptiness. But without changing that fact, I've made it seem like a frog."  
  
"Honey, that's very interesting, but-"  
  
"I bet this frog likes to be a frog. I bet he likes nothing more. I bet he would hate to be, say, a crane." With that, she pulled on two small flaps of paper, and like magic, the paper frog became a paper crane. "I bet now, he likes being a crane. I bet now, he'll hate to be a frog. He doesn't know how easy it is to change him."  
  
"Honey, is something wrong?"  
  
"How would you like to be changed? Not how you look, that's too easy. How about if I change who you are?"  
  
Michiru was taken aback. Her child still had not looked at her, was still playing with her origami. "Is there something I did wrong?"  
  
"I've already started to pull on you. You don't know, you can't feel it, but it's happening. When it is done, you will like what you have become. But now, it would horrify you."  
  
Michiru was horrified, she was scared too much to even talk. What was going on? What was happening?  
  
Setsuna turned to her, eyes burning with an otherworldly blue flame. She held the crane forward and spoke, "But don't be afraid. If you lose your life, your soul, you haven't lost much. What you have to remember, Kaioh Michiru..." Here she pulled on a seemingly inconsequential spot on the crane's wing, causing it to revert to a flat piece of paper in one fluid motion, "Is that you, too, are borne of the void."  
  
Michiru took a staggering step backward, away from her beloved child. She was no more than three feet tall, yet she loomed over the entire room like a towering monolith of insanity. Michiru desperately searched for words, but nothing escaped her lips save confused babbling. Setsuna smiled--  
  
Michiru was roused by the feeling of elbow gently colliding with her ribs. She looked around in panic, ready to be attacked at any instant, expecting to be surrounded by monstrous horrors and weeping stone monuments.   
  
All she saw was the cozy interior of an All Nippon Airways plane. Every seat was filled with a placid passenger, some sleeping, some whispering to their seatmates, some contentedly reading the five-year-old issues of "Newsweek" provided by the airline. A beverage service cart rolled lazily by, propelled by a typically too-courteous stewardess.  
  
"Get your stuff together, honey," whispered Haruka upon seeing that her lover was awake. "We're landing."  
  
Michiru nodded in mute acknowledgement and began to gather her carry-on luggage with trembling, sweaty hands. Haruka looked at her for several seconds and flatly asked, "It was the dream again, wasn't it?"  
  
Michiru nodded. "Gets worse every time... that smile, sweet Kami-sama, that smile. It sends chills down my spine. And that's not all of it-- I feel like I should know what it means, but I don't. Why was Setsuna a child? Who were those other children? What... What does it all mean?"  
  
Haruka put her hand on Michiru's thigh to reassure her. "Don't worry. That's what we came here to find out."  
  
***  
  
"Look out Sailor Venus, he's coming in from the right!"  
  
CRASH!  
  
Sailor Venus, caught completely off-guard, was sent careening into a wall laden with pachinko machines, resulting in a spray of ball bearings and a shower of dull orange sparks. Undaunted, the Senshi of Love had vaulted back to her feet before the steel spheres could hit the ground, diving over an overturned Street Fighter 2 machine, executing a somersault, and leaping at the creature which had no more than two seconds ago tossed her aside like a rag doll.  
  
"Crescent Beam SHOWER!" she howled, unleashing from her fingertips a storm of pure magical energy. The burning yellow beam shot toward the grinning face of the youma and split into several separate finger-thin beams, which traveled around its head to the back of its skull before impacting with tremendous force. The blast was powerful enough to stagger the youma forward several steps, but its body colliding with Sailor Venus was also more than enough to vault her once again into the air. Ricocheting like a pinball, she collided with the glass entrance door, instantly reducing it to a cobweb of shatter-marks, then skidded to a halt facedown on the dirty, thin carpet.  
  
But the Sailor Senshi had not defended the city of Tokyo for four years by being easily distracted. Heedless to the plight of her companion, Sailor Jupiter prepared to hurl a sphere of pure electricity at the rampaging titan, who had by now turned his attention to the struggling Sailor Mars. "Supreme Thunder Dragon!" she invoked, and prepared to--  
  
Ding-ding.  
  
Sailor Jupiter's instincts immediately kicked in to overdrive. Not that the sound was loud, to the contrary, it was barely audible. It was, however, unexpected-- that was the bell the proprietor had hung over the arcade's front door. It was supposed to signal the entry or exit of a customer whenever the door hit the bells. But no-one was left in the arcade, and that meant...  
  
It meant that someone was either stupid or suicidal. Perhaps both.  
  
She chanced a quick glance at the doorway, and could not honestly say she was surprised. A tall man, with short white hair, wearing a light winter coat, and extending from his right hand a silver revolver. Just another normal man who thought the fact he could tote and aim two pounds of steel somehow placed him equal to-- or above-- the sworn defenders of all that was right.  
  
Just another man she'd have to rescue.  
  
Pathetic.  
  
Sure enough, the man leveled the pistol and shot the youma square in the face. Already knocked off-balance by Venus's attack, the lumbering brute toppled to the floor. As self-assured as if he had been Jet Li's coolness tutor, he spun the revolver and placed it into his hip holster, an action doubtlessly rehearsed thousands of times in front of his bathroom mirror. And as Jupiter had expected, he immediately began to introduce himself, no doubt trying to curry favor from the women he had endlessly fantasized about.  
  
"My name is Jean-Paul Delacroix," he said with a nasal French accent. "And I'm from Canada. I don't have time to get into the particulars, but suffice--"  
  
"You can't do that," Jupiter said flatly. By this point, a group of foreigners garbed in similar attire began to stride in. Of course, he'd expect her to be immediately impressed by their utter lack of skill.  
  
He turned to face Jupiter, and with a half-bow, said, "I know it may seem harsh, but these will be trying times, and we can't afford--"  
  
"No. I mean, you can't do that."  
  
The slender girl with the green ponytail poked at the toppled form of the creature with her foot, then spoke up. "Uh, Del? He ain't dead yet, you might wanna do something about that."  
  
In a flash, the one who called himself Delacroix made a quarter-turn on one heel, snapped the pistol from its holster, and unloaded the remaining five slugs directly into the monster's face. To make sure, the green-tressed woman took a gun from her jacket-- were they all armed? How stupid could they be? Were they even aware of the laws here?-- and squeezed what must have been at least 20 rounds into the youma's head and chest area.  
  
It groaned, and began to rise.  
  
Now, to his credit, the stranger didn't panic. Quite the opposite, in fact. Taking it in stride, he gestured to one of his companions, a gargantuan man with faded red hair and biceps the size of garbage cans. The giant nodded, and twisted a small silver ring on his right hand.  
  
What happened next was completely unexpected.  
  
He rose a half-meter into the air, arms draped at his sides, and issued forth a squeal of pure glee. He then threw his arms above him, and was immediately enveloped in a opaque white sphere of... Sailor Jupiter was not quite sure what it was. It crackled with energy-- perhaps it was energy itself.  
  
The sphere contracted near its top, as if pressed by an unseen stylus. The depression then quickly traced across the man's body, outlining his rough shape, with several arcane sigils overlaid upon it. The sphere then, as suddenly as it appeared, vanished, revealing the man, clad head-to-toe in masterfully wrought interlocking metal plates, and toting a titanic obsidian axe, at least a meter long.  
  
He held the implement above his head, and with no fanfare, dropped it, cleaving the creature below him into two blood-soaked halves which slid across the floor as if they had been greased. He whooped with glee and said, "Jesus FUCK I love that! That is NEVER gonna get old!"  
  
Though it appeared as if he had carelessly dropped the weapon, he applied enough force to it not only to hack through the youma's body, but also to embed it at least thirty centimeters into the ground, sundering the store's concrete foundation.   
  
Jupiter could not imagine the destruction that would ensue, should the monolith of muscle have cause to bring the full brunt of his strength down on something. Even in trying to envision it, she was rendered dumbstruck.  
  
Delacroix was not. His tone clearly indicated that, after such a display of the power he commanded-- or at least, was a part of-- he had no need to be diplomatic. "Now, I am going to talk, and you are going to listen, and you are going to listen to me very, very carefully," he intoned evenly.  
  
The Senshi, still dumbstruck at the display, had not the presence of mind to argue.  
  
"Good." He flicked some grey ash from his cigarette and continued. "Now that we have that nasty affair settled, it's time we got down to business."  
  
"Ooh, business," said the green-haired one, moving her hands mockingly.  
  
"Shut up you sassy fucking cunt," snapped the one called Delcaroix, who then whirled to face Usagi. "My business is as follows: For the next fifteen days, I am your golden fucking god. You got that? My every word is engraved on a tablet to be brought down by Charlton Motherfucking Heston. You're going to follow my every directive, and in doing so you will survive. But if you DARE to defy me, I'm going to shoot you myself. And," he turned again, once more facing the green-tressed one, "that goes for ALL of you. We clear? Good! You have five minutes to get acquainted while I go get a pack of smokes." With that, he stepped smartly out the door, sliding his emptied pistol into the inside of his jacket.  
  
Both groups stood in mute shock for several seconds. Furtive glances were exchanged, between the Senshi, between the newcomers, and finally between both groups. After about fifteen seconds, the silence was broken by one of the newcomers, a short, blue-haired man in a grey hooded sweatshirt.  
  
"Hoo boy," he said in accented Japanese, "that guy needs to get laid."  
  
After such a conversational failure, it would be a while before anyone spoke again.  
  
***  
  
As of 6:43 AM, Monday, April first, 1996, all was right in the world of Dr. Tomoe Souichi. Some may have called him "disadvantaged", perhaps even "disabled" -- but that was all rubbish. It was true, Tomoe was confined to a wheelchair, due to a years-past lab accident that had also damaged his hippocampus and left him with amnesia -- but that wasn't a disability. If anything, it was a benefit, because it allowed him an excuse to stay at home with his beloved daughter, Hotaru.  
  
His paycheck from Mugen Academy said that he was supposed to be administering an on-line Religious Studies course, but he'd blown off his duties to watch "Tama And Friends" with his darling Hotaru. After all, Dr. Tomoe would rather be with his daughter than teach a boring old course on "Devil-worship cults in pre-Islam Arabia".  
  
Souichi pointed at the screen, where Tama was currently learning about the ancient tradition of the Shinto Arch. "Look, Hotaru," he burbled, "haven't you seen one of those before?" His daughter giggled with glee, recognizing the same type of arch as the Hikawa shrine possessed, recalling her frequent visits there.  
  
Unfortunately, Action News 5 decided that murders happening across town were more important than a father bonding with his daughter, and so interrupted the broadcast to bring you a special late-breaking news bulletin. Souichi didn't hear much of it before he turned the TV off altogether -- something about a string of brutal murders over the last eight hours, using a staff-like weapon, authorities urge calm, et cetera et cetera. The media is so sensationalist, thought Suoichi, that they'd interrupt children's programming with such grisly news just to get the "scoop" on their competitors. He sighed, then plucked his daughter from the couch and placed her in his lap.  
  
"Well, since we can't watch TV, what do you want to do today, punkin?"  
  
Hotaru didn't really respond to the question, but then again it didn't matter. She merely wrapped her thin little arms around her father's neck, squeezed, and said "I love you, Daddy."  
  
"I love you too, sweetheart." Suoichi squeezed her back, a single tear of joy tricking down his cheek.   
  
  
  
With the enthusiasm only a small child could muster, Hotaru bounded from her father's lap and immediately changed the subject. "I'm gonna go get my crayons, you want to draw something with me Daddy?"  
  
"Sure I will, sweetie." Suoichi manipulated the joystick on his motorized wheelchair to pilot him into the kitchen, past the refrigerator already wallpapered in his daughter's designs. Most would call them crude, but Suoichi saw a simplistic and primal beauty in them. He rather hoped his daughter would become an artist.  
  
He pulled some paper from the counter -- he always had some on hand, Hotaru loved to draw -- and placed it on the table in front of him. Hotaru pulled the purple crayon from its box and began to lazily engrave lines upon the paper, taking her time so as to be precise.  
  
Suiochi, no slacker in the drawing department himself after six months of "art therapy" in the hospital following his paralysis, began to carefully sketch out a picture of a kitten in charcoals. Art was never more than a hobby to the doctor, he never felt confident enough with his talents, that he was merely representing objects, not expressing himself. Besides, the kitten's fur was hard to get right. He smudged it with his finger and started over, this time with a gentler touch.  
  
Hotaru, standing on her chair so that she was tall enough to use the table, looked up from her drawing. "What are you drawing, Daddy?"  
  
Suiochi smiled. "I'm drawing a pretty little kitten, for my pretty little girl." He turned his tablet and showed her the picture, flaws and all. She gasped in awe.  
  
"That's really pretty, Daddy. Can we get a kitty just like that?"  
  
"Oh, I don't know, sweetie, kitties are an awfully big responsibility." Suiochi hated playing the role of "responsible parent."  
  
"Pleeease, Daddy?" said Hotaru, flashing her expert crocodile tears and quivering her lower lip just a bit.   
  
It didn't take long for the display to melt Suiochi's heart. "Okay, sweetie, we'll see."  
  
"Yay!" Hotaru yelped, "You're the bestest Daddy ever!" She jumped from her spot and scampered to his seat, where she lept at him in a great hug. Then, quite mercurial, she released from him and said "Here, wanna see my picture? I drew a picture of us!"  
  
Suiochi took the drawing from the outstretched hand of his daughter, looking at it in much the same way as he would the Mona Lisa. The house had been done in brick-red, and standing outside it under the smiling sun were a small smiling girl in purple clothing to represent Hotaru, a smiling man in an oddly-proportioned wheelchair to represent himself, and a standing black man swathed in red and yellow robes...  
  
"Honey," Suiochi asked, "Who's this man standing here by the koi pond?"  
  
"Its your friend" Hotaru responded, as if it was plainly obvious. "You have him over here and talk with him all the time, remember?"  
  
"No... No, Sweetie, I don't remember this man."  
  
"Daddy, you're silly. He has to be like your bestest friend in the whole wide world, he comes over and plays with you so much! He said his name one time, but I forgot how to spell it. It started with an "N" and sounded real funny, like he was foreign. Don't you remember, Daddy?"  
  
Suoichi was frightened, but didn't want to upset his daughter. "Oh, of course I remember him, he's my friend!" Quickly trying to change the subject, he then said "Now, if we want to get a kitty today, we should..." At this point, he picked up his picture of a kitten, so he could pretend to study it for criteria. But as he pulled the sheet of paper toward him, he saw it wasn't a drawing of a kitten, and wasn't even a drawing -- it was a seal of some sort, and it filled Suoichi with dread merely by looking at it. It was a pentagram inset in a circle, but filled with occidental lines that twisted and jumped and writhed as he looked at them, seeming not to follow the rules of Cartesian geometry. The design was filled with these lines, overlain with what appeared to be Sanskrit, the outline of a human eye quite visible under the chaos of the seal. It was a disturbing sight, to say the least. Suiochi looked at it in panic for a few seconds, then tore it from his sight, wadding it into a ball and throwing it aside.   
  
Alas, he was greeted with an even more disturbing sight -- his daughter was no longer standing before him. She had not announced her departure, nor had Suoichi heard her leave. "H-Hotaru?" he called out timidly, creeped out beyond the scope of words.  
  
No response. He directed his wheelchair into the living room and agian called, "Hotaru?"   
  
This time, he was met with a faint cry of "Daddy?" that seemed to come from the bedroom area. Forgetting his fear, he cursed his wheelchair's motor as he drove it too slowly toward his daughter's bedroom. As he reached the door, he again heard a plaintive "Daddy", as if his daughter were in great pain.   
  
He threw the door open, and gasped in shock. There was no assailant, just his daughter, on her hands and knees, head over a puddle of bloody vomit that was seeping its way into the carpet. She was older somehow, as if she had aged ten years in the thirty seconds she'd been out of Suoichi's sight. She turned to him, ragged and filthy hair falling away to reveal her face, pale with hollowed cheeks and hollow eyes. "I'm sorry, Daddy. I feel so sick..." At this she buckled, her entire body spasming, and vomited blood onto her own tattered school uniform.  
  
"Oh God, honey, honey, what's wrong?" He moved himself closer to the girl, outstretched his arms to cradle her in. She was cold to the touch, clammy and corpselike. She rose her head to look at him, but found the exertion too great and merely lay against his breast. Suoichi ran his fingers through her hair, whispering assertions that it would all be okay, everything is fine, daddy is here...  
  
She moaned, and vomited once more in his lap. The bloody fluid burned Suiochi wherever it touched him, but he could barely even register the pain. He held the girl tight, knuckles white, as if he never intended to let her out of his grasp again. He took her head as gently as he could and pulled it back, allowing her to see his face. He bit his lip to keep from crying. She had been out of his sight for no less than thirty seconds, and now she was dying. He had no idea how, nor why, nor how to stop it. He ran his fingers through her hair and reassured her that everything would be okay. She looked into his eyes--  
  
--but they were not her eyes. Something far darker. No longer those of his beloved daughter, they were as cold, empty, and menacing as a starless midnight sky. They radiated malice, hate, and revulsion. And then they were gone.  
  
Suiochi was grasping at naught but empty air. From the living room, he heard an explosion loud enough to sunder the entire house. He rose from his wheelchair and stumbled from the room, through a doorway that seemed more skewed than when he entered it last. From the corner of his eye he saw that it was night outside, but not this nor anything else disturbed him more than the sight of his daughter. The entire experience was like a horrible nightmare, but still one from which he could awaken. He braced himself against the wall as he walked to the origin of the explosion, senses fogged by the stupor of the dreaming.  
  
There she was, in the sitting room, lying atop an impossible conglomeration of concrete and steel rubble. Her skin was grey with pulverized cement, rivulets of blood ran down her entire body, and a shard of rebar stood up from her stomach pointing toward the stars. Her eyes were glassy, blank, devoid of the spark of life. She wore her school uniform, and in her hand was a crumpled piece of paper. Hands quivering and eyes watering, Suiochi crouched and leaned forward to take it.  
  
He unfurled it and saw it was a simple piece of lined paper, written on with a child's scrawl. At the top in red ink were the words "102% GREAT JOB!!! A+" followed by a sketched smiling face and small, sparkling sticker of a star.  
  
"You told me never to come down to the lab," came a voice from behind him, "but I had to anyway. I mean, I'd got better than perfect on the science quiz, I thought you'd be elated to see it. How was I supposed to know what you were doing right as I ran down the stairs? How was I supposed to know you were running an experiment on -- what did you call it in your notes? -- "volatile crystal lattice formations in reaction with the energy of a quantum vacuum"? How was I to know all that?"  
  
Suiochi knew what he would see, but stood and turned to face it anyway. It was his daughter, as healthy as she had ever been, wearing an elaborately-designed sailor suit festooned with jewelry and bows, carrying at her side a pole-arm -- glaive, he remembered, it's called a glaive -- that seemed sharp enough to cleave the planet if she dropped it. Her eyes lit for a brief moment, so short it seemed to not happen at all, then her face contorted into a scowl.  
  
"How was I supposed to know you wouldn't leave me dead!" Her hand flew forward, twisted into a claw, and pinned his neck against the newly-restored wall. "That you'd rather make a deal with the Devil than make a deal with your own grief! That you'd see me as an experiment more than as your daughter! YOU SON OF A BITCH, YOU SOLD MY LIFE!" She struck him in the face, the neck, the arms, the chest, anywhere she could hit. She rained blows on him, sobbing with every punch, and though she was frail and her attacks weak, Suiochi felt them stronger and more painfully than anything else in his life.  
  
When the blows stopped, he looked up, feeling unworthy to meet his daughter's eyes and not knowing why. She had changed again, into a cold stiletto of a woman sealed inside a jet-black dress. The face was the same, but the eyes were totally different, they were utter anathema to his daughter's eyes no matter how enraged she may become. Suiochi was certain now that this was a dream, though he doubted that he would awaken from it.  
  
"But you never could do the job, number-cruncher. Something always held you back, didn't it? A little voice that told you you'd gone too far. So you botched the job, and you left others to clean up your mess. Well, numbers man, now your mess has come home."  
  
The woman wavered around the edges and became Hotaru, and it all came flooding back.  
  
Dr. Tomoe fell to his knees, arms spread from his sides, and wept. "Whatever you want from me," he sobbed, "I'll give it to you! I swear to God, I'll give you whatever you want!"  
  
"There is nothing in this world that you could offer me to spare your life." Her form wavered once more and became the black-shrouded woman, her face a mocking sneer. "You always were a failure, supplicant. At least in death, you may provide some amusement to me."  
  
"No, no, no, no, no..." Tomoe whispered to himself, as if by repeating the mantra he would dispel the vision before him. "I didn't know, how could I have known, I only wanted what was best for you, I only wanted to make you happy, I wanted, I wanted, I wanted..."  
  
Wavering. She was again the stern monolithic woman with wicked polearm in-hand. "Liar!" she spat, "Liar, traitor, murderer!" Regaining her composure, she intoned with less emotion but no less disdain, "As there is no remedy for your iniquities, accept me. You are wicked --" The shadows ran together and she was the woman in black, curled around Tomoe's wracked body, fingers in light caress on his tear-streaked face. "--but I am more wicked than you," she whispered into his ears seductively.  
  
The stern Hotaru stood as if she had never left. "You abandoned me to the crawling chaos, you damned me into nonexistence to cover up the mistakes you made. You robbed me of my childhood, my friends, my health, my sanity, my spirit, and my life. And now, I intend to collect what is my own!"  
  
He whimpered. It was not long before he screamed. It was longer before he was cut silent.  
  
The fact that being caught armed in a destroyed arcade by the police would be bad being one of the few things they could agree on, the combined forces of Senshi and interlopers had relocated to the Hikawa shrine.  
  
They had spoken briefly on the way over -- they caravanned in a large military Humvee, a blue Trans Am, and a Toyota that Ami had suspected stolen -- but Ami knew little more than the names of the Western newcomers. The thin, swarthy woman leaning against the incense burner was named Sahlea, the blue-haired one in the grey "ARKHAM ARCHANGELS" hooded sweatshirt trying to look at her without her noticing was named August, the carved slab of muscle dozing quietly with his fingers threaded behind his head was Adrian, and... that was all she could keep straight, really. Ami had a good memory, but the Americans were somehow homogenous in their discordance, and hard to tell apart.  
  
Currently, the albino -- Delacroix -- was attempting, unsuccessfully, to argue that Usagi follow him as if she were his soldier. It was clear he had expected help from "his men", but they either were puzzled by his demands, or ignored them altogether and chatted amongst themselves. If they really were part of the Moon Kingdom, Ami mused, then standards must have been far lower than she thought.  
  
"You do not understand, Queen, the threat this poses to you. Things are going to happen that are beyond the ken of anything you've faced. If I'm not in charge, we'll be lucky if we get out alive."  
  
Usagi didn't look any more convinced than she was the last time he'd said this, which was about 2 minutes ago. "What are you talking about? If it's really that bad, you should be able to tell me what it is!"  
  
"I can't tell you, Queen. All I can say is that if left unchecked, they will make re-establishing the Moon Kingdom upon Earth impossible. If we strike quickly and decisively--"  
  
Rei spoke up. "Wait, is this an 'it' or a 'they'?"  
  
Makoto chimed in, "Or is he just making this up as he goes?" She looked at one of them, a tanned man with a thin moustache and slicked-back black hair. He shrugged and looked the other way, as if to say that in addition to not knowing, he didn't care.  
  
Delacroix sighed, then continued with his nearly perfect Japanese. "I can understand if you doubt me, you probably have been met by lunatics before who claimed to have knowledge of some dire danger. If you will not be convinced... then we will have to move onward." He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it, the paper looked as if it had been in there for a while.  
  
"I've written down the address of one of their strongholds. It is in this city -- shrouded from sight so that they may carry out their work unhindered. If you really want proof... we can go there, today. If you sense nothing amiss there, then we will leave and trouble you no longer. But if you see something... dark... will you accept that I came here with purpose? Look there for yourself and decide."  
  
Usagi took the piece of paper from his outstretched hand and looked; it was a furo that she had seen a few times from a bus window, in Kita ward. "This... this 'they', what are they doing there?" Nobody else said anything, they were mostly watching the two speak. Even the outsiders seemed to be realizing that something important was about to happen.  
  
"I don't know. Nothing good."  
  
Usagi crumpled the paper in her hand. "If you're right, then these people could be hurting innocent people. We can't let that happen. I'll go -- but not just to look."  
  
"Ah... I can't let you do that. It would be dangerous there, and I would die before you were to be harmed."  
  
The one called Adrian started to say something, but Delacroix had drawn his pistol, thumbed back the hammer, and pointed it at his head before he even fully drew breath.  
  
"If I can't go, then why did you bother coming to me?"  
  
Delacroix paused. "Crystal, bring the car around. If she's going, we're going."  
  
"So, what do you think is wrong with him?"  
  
"Hell if I know."  
  
"Well, it has to be something. He drags us off to Japan and won't fucking tell us why, he loses his shit with Polito before noon, and he's calling this chick 'Queen'." Frank Long paused, then turned to the woman crammed next to him in the backseat of the stolen Toyota sedan. "So, is she a queen, or what?"  
  
The girl with the short brown ponytail responded tersely, "Yes."  
  
"Well, I guess that settles that. August, could you check to see if there's still some coffee in that cup?"  
  
"Don't bother", said Crystal Dyson as she put the car into "park". "We're here."  
  
The building was pretty nondescript, looking like pretty much every other building in Tokyo, ugly. People walked the streets in front of it, parting around the eleven that had come here -- Delacroix had told Adrian, Gordon, Sahlea, Weronika, Vincent, and Shantae to stay behind, since bringing everyone would just cause friendly fire.  
  
Usagi reached for the door to pull it open when Delacroix put his pale hand on her shoulder. "Just don't say I didn't warn you," he said, and then she opened the door and everything went to hell.  
  
There was a man standing at a desk inside, on the far end of the room the door opened into. He nodded at her as she walked in, followed by the rest of the group that had come here. He smiled a little, looked like a nice guy. As soon as the door closed behind the last one, he ducked behind his desk and rolled out from the side with an Ingram Mac-10. 


End file.
